Bad news for opponents: Cats are better than ever

By Rohan Connolly

HOW can you not love Geelong? The Cats are not only one of the most successful sides we've ever seen, they're also close to the most entertaining we've ever been privileged enough to watch.

At its peak, as it most certainly was in Saturday night's demolition of Essendon, Geelong is breathtaking. The Cats are as hard and disciplined as anyone, but never at the expense of their own attacking and creative instincts.

They play with flair and panache, and even, in this ultra-serious age, still manage to have a bit of fun besides. It's a formula some of us would be quite content to go on watching the rest of our lives. But those beginning to tire of Geelong's dominance should brace themselves, because it could be going on a while yet.

You wouldn't have found too many people at the start of this year prepared to say Geelong would be a better side again in 2010, perhaps not even the Cats.

Plenty expected them to hold their ground, although there were a significant number who thought after three great years a great era could be on the wane.

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But right now, Geelong is a cut above its opposition, at its best, close to untouchable. And the Cats are indeed better than they were.

They've had a few more emphatic wins over the journey than Saturday night's, but perhaps none with their playing stocks so reduced, the absentees from the victory including Matthew Scarlett, Joel Corey, Max Rooke, Cam Mooney, Tom Hawkins and Brad Ottens.

That's four key-position players, a valuable utility, and one of the best midfielders of the modern era. And yet, against the Bombers, Geelong seemed to barely even miss them. Add depth and flexibility, too, to that endless list of superlatives about this latter-day colossus.

Perhaps the scariest part for the Cats' opponents is that this 2010 model is hitting the scoreboard even harder. After 12 rounds, they're averaging 18.3 goals a game, and have already racked up 1495 points, at a stunning average of 124.5, better than at any time during their four-season run of excellence.

Geelong still likes spreading the goalkicking load, and has 10 players averaging at least a goal a game, but it has more forwards now likely to kick bags of them.

James Podsiadly's five-goal haul against Essendon was his fifth such tally in only nine games. He's got 29 now at an average of 3.2. Leading goalkicker Steve Johnson already has 35, just five fewer than he kicked last year, and only 11 behind the figure that was enough to win Mooney the club goalkicking in 2009.

Where once the critics bemoaned a lack of key forwards for the Cats, now there's a plethora, and for coach Mark Thompson, options everywhere when Mooney, Hawkins, and eventually Ottens, come back into the mix. There's the in-betweeners such as Johnson and Paul Chapman, and little crumbers all over the place, Travis Varcoe and Shannon Byrnes, Geelong's two most improved players this year, and Mathew Stokes besides.

Johnson, interviewed on 3AW after the game, had no hesitation in calling the present forward set-up the best of which he'd been a part. "I think this forward line really works for each other, we share the load, we run out of each other's space, and it's the best it's worked for sure," he said.

But Geelong isn't just better forward. At a more general level, the Cats are handling the ball more, taking more marks, winning more clearances and tackling more than at any time since this phenomenal run began in early 2007.

And the biggest tick of all is reserved for the way Geelong has stuck to its guns in a football age full of fashions and fads. It wasn't any zoning that brought it undone in that infamous loss of the 2008 grand final against Hawthorn (62 inside 50s), and St Kilda's forward press wasn't enough to prevent it making up for that loss last year.

So just who is going to stop them in 2010? In 2008, Geelong had Hawthorn snapping at its heels most of the way, and the Saints won more games than the Cats last year. But this season, the gap between the Cats and their challengers has, if anything, widened.

Carlton's pace troubled Geelong in its uncharacteristic 36-point loss in round five, but Essendon has plenty of leg speed, too. The Cats simply refused to allow the Bombers to use it.

Indeed that loss to Carlton looks simply more like a bad day at the office than the opening of any chinks in the armour. And more and more, the destination of this year's premiership is looking a foregone conclusion.